Discussion in the Afterlife
by xXKazaneXx
Summary: Two people meet in the afterlife and they have a random discussion courtesy of one Sumeragi Hokuto. Kotori's head is going to be a bit messed up.


Discussion in the Afterlife

"Ophelia didn't have to die."

"Eh?"

A blonde head shot up from amongst a flock of birds, revealing a fair young girl dressed in white. Hokuto resolved to design some outfits for her, preferably in all the colors of the rainbow. They were dead but it didn't mean they had to be boring!

"Like I said Kotori-chan. Ophelia didn't have to die." Hokuto said, uncharacteristically serious.

"Who is Ophelia, Hokuto-san?" Kotori was still confused.

"Ophelia, Kotori-chan, is you."

"Eh?! I don't understand, Hokuto-san. Do you mean it literally or figuratively?"

"KOTORI-CHAN! How many times have I told you to call me Hokuto-chan!? 'Hokuto-san' makes me feel so old……"Hokuto whined.

Kotori blushed in embarrassment. Hokuto treated everyone familiarly and expected the same in return, causing some problems for shy Kotori who had been raised as any traditional Japanese to only call a close friend by certain honorifics, "chan" being one of them.

"I'm sorry Hokuto-sa…..chan……, but….but….what did you mean when you said I was Ophelia…..um…..san?" Having been exposed to things like the end of the world, Dragons of Earth and Dragons of Heaven plus magic in general since Kamui came back to Tokyo, Kotori's sense of what was what had gone haywire. Not to mention that she had been insane when she died.

"Well, I remembered all of a sudden, that play we had to read in school during Advanced English by William Shakespeare, that famous playwright, have you heard about him? Ahha! You don't believe I took Advanced English, don't you? Kotori-chan, you shouldn't judge people by their appearances! My English was good enough that I was qualified to sign up for advanced classes. _Ja ja_, back to the point. The play was titled "Hamlet" and the heroine or was she………_Ma ne_! Ophelia was the lover or wait, was she not……….Don't really remember, _demo_…….Gah! She was in love with Hamlet, the hero; at least I'm sure of that. I just realized it but you and her have a lot in common!" Hokuto finished triumphantly.

"Oh…….really….Hokuto-sa…..chan? How so?" Kotori was curious now and there's nothing more dangerous than a curious woman except, of course, an angry woman.

"Well, where should I begin? Hmmmm…….OK! Now there was a prince of Denmark named Hamlet, his father, also named Hamlet by the way, was killed by Hamlet's uncle, the king's brother. The ghost came back to ask Hamlet to avenge him; Hamlet pretends to be crazy; drives Ophelia half mad by declaring love one minute and insulting her the next; killing her father making her completely insane; she killed herself by drowning; Hamlet fought with her brother in her grave and everybody dies after a big duel! Yeah, that pretty much sums everything up." Hokuto said this so quickly that Kotori barely caught up with what she was saying, but than again Kotori had grown up with meddling housewives and ecstatic fan girls gushing at the speed of light at her father or brother respectively and after 15 years of being exposed to all this, her ability to decipher fast talking had been trained, which now served her well, though she had barely mastered this skill.

"I see….. So this…..Hamlet is Kamui-chan. He came to Tokyo after his parent, in this case okaa-san, told him to and the events that happened caused me-Ophelia, to lose my mind and then to pass away. Then Kamui-chan will fight with onii-chan at the Final Battle which is the duel where everybody dies. Is that correct?" Like all woman-folk, Kotori had the innate ability to put two and two together, though sometimes it leads to disastrous results.

"Bingo, Kotori-chan! You're also part of the Ophelia trope, just like her and she's the trope namer! Oops!" Hokuto covers her mouth when she realizes she just broke the fourth wall. "Hokuto-chan what's that?" Kotori was getting more confused and curious. She might have made sense of Hokuto's jumbled up explanation but bear in mind that Kotori's brain was still recovering from her pre-death insanity, Hokuto's cryptic comparisons weren't helping.

"Haaaah…….where do I begin? You both have long, flowing hair; are in love with men who send conflicting signals, not to mention they are men of power; went crazy thanks to them; have brothers that are destined to fight your lover to the death; said stuff with hidden meanings during insanity, quite clever and in your case prophetic; said poetic things near water before promptly dying in water! You were taken out of water than stabbed, than cut into pieces by wire, with your body parts falling into water, while Ophelia drowned! There are others that I'm too lazy to say." Hokuto ticked it all off on a checklist that had suddenly appeared, all the while grinning maniacally. Kotori couldn't help but sweat drop.

"And it wasn't necessary for both of you to die." Hokuto added, suddenly serious; the wind blowing in a way that made her hair and clothes billow in that special way that made everything seem so dramatic.

"Like something from a manga story." Kotori thought sweat dropping. Yet the girl was amazed at how the older girl, woman if compared to Kotori's year of birth, could change moods in the blink of an eye or was Kotori being given the honor of looking behind a mask?

"I hadn't much choice, Hokuto-san. Whoever became the 'Kamui' of the Dragons of Earth would have killed me. My destiny was to die for my loved ones. It might be possible to change 'fate', but I didn't have that kind of power and strength to do it." Kotori closed her eyes, and cut off Hokuto just as she was opening her mouth to speak. "I don't blame onii-chan. It was my wish to die, because earlier on, in one of my dreams of the future, I had decided that I would rather shatter than watch the world shatter."

"So both they and the world might remain whole." She silently added in thought. Kotori smiled, it never reached her eyes. Hokuto knew, somehow she just knew, that Kotori was worried for her brother and the one she loved, both waiting and preparing for the Promised Battle, because Hokuto herself was worried for her own brother, now coping with the aftermath of his most important person's death, and the one she loved, Kakyo. Both were involved in the Promised Day and they were on opposing sides, like the men Kotori loved with all her being.

"But still…...."

"It wasn't' necessary for you to die too." Kotori swiftly countered and Hokuto couldn't help but wonder _what _Kotori really was.

Despaired that Kotori didn't see reason, Hokuto cried, "I wanted to help my brother Kotori; I took whatever chance I could! He and Sei-chan are precious to me!" It was a silent plea to be understood, containing regret in the chance of a future lost, dreams given up on, yet none for the sacrifice made.

"So you understand, Hokuto-san, why I did what I did?" Kotori asked eyes gentle but steely with a silent determination. Hokuto started and she met Kotori's gaze. Staring into each others eyes, trying to read the others emotions, they came to a silent understanding. Neither noticed that Kotori had called Hokuto 'Hokuto-san'. Both were lost in thought, somehow the other knew and understood because, really, some things couldn't be said in words.

Hokuto broke the spell induced by that strange moment with a sad, bitter laugh. "I guess I do. We are sisters of powerful men and we want to help them because we've always been burdens to them no matter what they think or say." Yes she knew, understood perfectly well, for how many times in her childhood had she cried silently, fearful that Subaru would know and see through her façade. Knew that she was a burden, her younger brother just too kind and forgiving to acknowledge the fact, but that was what it was, a fact, a stone-cold fact.

"We want to do what we can for the ones we love, even if it will leave them broken without us, we know and trust them to survive." Kotori finished.

"Yes………" Hokuto agreed. They had let it all out, had shared the hurt, the pain, the sorrow, the frustration and feelings of inadequacy that had gathered through the years with someone who understood. For no matter how perfect they seemed, they too had their flaws, it's just that they are strong, not physically but emotionally. Feelings that had been bottled up had been released and they could now fully embrace happiness. Kotori wondered that if this had happened earlier, would she have gone mad?

A quick glance at her watch and Hokuto exclaimed, "Oh no! I promised Sei-chan that I'd cook tonight! Bye Kotori-chan!" Just like that, Hokuto disappeared like a whirlwind. She had confronted her worries and fears, had won and now could truly smile from the inside out. Hokuto and Kotori were of the kind that never let sadness take up all the space in their hearts and minds, knowing that it wasn't' healthy and it was a bad way to live life. They were dead but even during life they made the best out of everything they were faced with and with their smiles, made the world a better, happier place.

Kotori was left alone with her faithful companions, the birds. Reflecting on the rare moment of sadness and despair that had just past, she did another strange and rare thing. Kotori let out a harsh, miserable laugh. It felt so alien and foreign to her. A drop of moisture escaped, falling on her cheek but that was all. She wasn't the angel Kamui and many others considered her, only a very human girl, as fallible as the next. She had been protected; her father and brother had tried very hard to protect her from pain after her mother's passing. Yet pain had touched her, as she always knew it would and Kotori had went insane when the hurt, pain, loneliness slowly built up and the grief at remembering her mother's gruesome death and seeing another dying in the same way; her helplessness, even when she knew the future, pushed pass the scar tissue and engulfed her. Not for the first time, Kotori was thankful to Kakyo for pulling her out of the Sea of Sorrow, she shuddered to imagine the results if he hadn't. Even so Kotori was optimistic by nature and only times like these, alone, would she allow herself to purge these feelings of negativity that clouded and ate at her heart, hindering her from believing in the best. This was her secret, she chose to be happy.

"I didn't want to be a third-wheel." Kotori told her birds, eyes sad as only those who had loved and given up for the sake of their important person could. "I want them to be happy, they deserve to be. There might be wounds now but they will heal in time." Kotori whispered to the wind, unaware that Kamui and Fuuma needed her as much as she needed them. Then in a voice gentle but confident, hoping that the _kamikaze_ would carry her message to those still living, she said "Remember, the future is not foreordained, it is still undecided."

The _kamikaze_, ancient symbol of hope and assurance, blew towards the realm of living, carrying with it Kotori's message full of optimistic hope and assurance. It had also stolen some of the feathers from a certain "little bird", one of which will end up in the hands of a sullen, black-haired leader of the Dragons of Heaven.

**A/N: Kotori means little bird in Japanese. Sorry if she's OOC but I'm sure she too felt discouraged even if she was always optimistic, which is no small feat considering how depressing the world of X is. Kamikaze means "God Wind". I got the idea from Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne where the kamikaze is the wind God sent to tell the people they weren't alone. The God in that world is a little warped though, so please be careful. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own X. CLAMP does which is apparent seeing how the characters (and the readers) are tortured. Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne belongs to Arina Tanemura and so does that particular concept on the God Wind. I own neither; if I did I would be very rich. **


End file.
